After processing the applications, the ministry aims to award licenses in early 2020

Annual APA rounds are aimed at expanding acreage around the explored areas, where new discoveries can be tied in to the existing pipelines and platforms.

Separate from the APA awards, Norway also conducts numbered licensing rounds, which include frontier parts of the Norwegian continental shelf, such as the eastern Barents Sea. (Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis, editing by Terje Solsvik)